Kiosks are deployed in different environments and enjoy a variety of functions. Common modern kiosks are unmanned or automated and provide a user with some form of interface in order to receive or supply information and products. However, such kiosks are limited with respect to the information or products they can supply based on location, communication capabilities, and other physical limitations.
Information related to the acquisition, appropriation, or purchasing of goods and services is currently handled in a variety of manners. Typically, information is provided in a human-to-human setting, a human-to-machine setting or some combination thereof. The desired result is a proper conveyance of information in exchange for the desired goods or services. This information might be, for example, payment information, or may be an indication that the recipient is entitled or eligible to receive the goods or services in question.
However, in many environments, the information provided in exchange for the goods or services must be verified in order to ensure that the goods or services can be properly provided. In such situations, there are numerous avenues that can be taken to fraudulently pass information to a human or machine in order to fraudulently obtain the desired goods or services. The information provided in these interactions is typically difficult or impossible to verify properly and in a timely fashion by a human or by a human working in conjunction with a machine. Further, it is typically impossible to track the purveyors of fraudulent information or the results of the fraud.
In many instances, it can be extremely damaging to a purveyor of goods and services to have these goods and services be fraudulently obtained. This can be particularly true when the goods and services in question have a restricted level of eligibility—for example, if the goods and services in question are only intended to be available to particular applicants. In many instances, if an applicant to receive restricted goods and services misrepresents themselves as eligible to receive the goods and services when they actually are not eligible, there can be adverse consequences for the purveyor. In the best-case scenario, the purveyor of goods and services will often be out the cost of providing the goods and services. In other instances, like when the goods and services are limited in number and have been pre-ordered by prospective buyers, the purveyor may open themselves up to civil legal liability when they do not have enough goods or services available to satisfy all of their customers. In other instances, like when the goods and services are restricted from purchase by a certain class of persons (for example, by a prohibition on felons purchasing firearms) the purveyor may open themselves up to criminal liability. In still other instances, like when there is a government subsidy for providing the goods and services, the purveyor may be fined for improperly awarding the goods and services to be awarded; for example, a number of mobile phone carriers have been fined for mistakenly awarding subsidized phones to ineligible recipients under the federal government's Lifeline program.
Despite the damage that fraud can do to a purveyor of goods and services, it can still be highly pervasive. Continuing with the Lifeline program example, according to one report, 41 percent of the 6 million subscribers enrolled in the federal government's Lifeline program could not produce documents that could verify their eligibility for the program, and many did not even bother to respond to FCC requests to produce eligibility documentation. This occurred despite the fact that, under the terms of the Lifeline program, mobile phone carriers could be fined for a significant amount of money (more than they received in subsidies) for each fraudulently-registered phone.
There are many reasons why it may be difficult for a purveyor of goods and services to limit the acquisition of restricted goods or services to just those applicants who are actually eligible to receive them. The first is that fraud may be hard to catch. For example, in the Lifeline program example above, before the program guidelines were strengthened, subscribers could verify that they were eligible to receive a phone merely signing their names to a form. The signatures of people eligible for the program could not be adequately verified, and as a result many of these signatures were fraudulent; for example, it was common for Lifeline plans to be registered to people who had not requested them, or Lifeline landlines to be registered to vacant houses. Even after program guidelines were strengthened in order to try to stem the amount of fraud taking place, it was still relatively easy to fraudulently obtain a Lifeline phone. For example, an additional step required by the new program guidelines was to require that an applicant produce additional documentation or proof of identity, such as a food stamp card; however, in many cases, fake food stamp cards were able to slip through the cracks just as the fake signatures had.
A second reason why fraud may be hard to catch is because of the presence of a human element. The interests of vendors of the good or service, or the interests of other parties in the chain, may not be aligned with the purveyor's interest in preventing fraud. For example, again referring to the example of the Lifeline program, a reason why fraud was difficult to detect was that the vendors of the Lifeline phones were incentivized to process as many applications as possible, and were not punished for allowing through fraudulent applications or otherwise incentivized against doing so. Because vendors were incentivized to process as many applications as possible (and were often even paid by the application), many allowed through even obvious fraud, such as food stamp cards stamped with the words “training card,” or food stamp cards that had clearly been printed from internet files. Some vendors even participated in the fraud; for example, according to one news report, when a reporter attempted to submit an application without a food stamp card or other proof of eligibility, the vendor supplied a food stamp card that belonged to another citizen.
Even well-meaning vendors who desired to prevent fraud found themselves unable to do so. A vendor of mobile phones under the Lifeline program who is working on the street and without assistance has very little ability to screen out forged signatures, especially when they have nothing to compare a proffered signature to and no expertise in handwriting analysis. The same street vendor likely also has very limited ability to screen out fraudulent documentation if any is presented to them by an applicant for a good or service, especially if the street vendor is tasked with providing goods and services to an applicant in a specific time window and cannot perform an extensive background check on any applicant. Because of this, many fraudulent signatures or fraudulent articles of documentation were accepted as part of the program.